Definition of "meaning" []

• Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance. (noun)
• Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose. (noun)
• An interpreted goal, intent, or end: "The central meaning of his pontificate is to restore papal authority” ( Conor Cruise O'Brien). (noun)
• Inner significance: "But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?” ( O. Henry). (noun)
• Full of meaning; expressive. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If by the _meaning_ of a general name are to be understood the things which it is the name of, no general name, except by accident, has a fixed meaning at all, or ever long retains the same meaning."
• "_meaning_, and we are aware how these meaning values shift with the stress and turns of thought, so that a given word has a greater or less weight in different sentences or even in different clauses of the same sentence."
• "This reply is problematical in that it implies that the multitude of native speakers of English who reject the logical positivists 'account of meaning somehow cannot see that that sentence is true in virtue of the meaning of the word ˜meaning™ ” which is no technical term but a word of ordinary English.)"